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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Going Vertical in L.A.

There is a war on development being waged all over Los Angeles. A familiar lament, I know, and one that’s been true one way or another for decades. But though the battle isn’t new, the alliances of today’s skirmishes have shifted. This isn’t necessarily the same old story of environmentalists fighting development on virgin ground, or of NIMBYs pushing for less traffic and more parking. Instead, it’s more of a tale of old versus young and of old-school Southern California versus an increasingly Manhattanized city. Ground zero might be Hollywood, where opponents of the Millennium Hollywood project are pulling out all stops to halt 39- and 35-story mixed-used towers planned for property next to the famed Capitol Records building. The latest skirmish is over charges the city approved the project despite its dangerous proximity to an earthquake fault. And the Valley has more than its share of similar battles. In Encino, homeowners for a decade fought developer M. David Paul’s Toscano project, a 325-unit, 605,000 square-foot mixed-use building on Sepulveda Boulevard near Camarillo Street. Approvals were finally earned this summer. And in Burbank, some are gearing up to challenge a planned mixed-use project at an eyesore of a block in the Media District. Local developer Cusumano Real Estate has proposed a $150 million mixed-use project anchored by a Whole Foods Market. I’m sure the development group is suiting up. The last developer that proposed a project there was bankrupted by delays. Now, there is word, as reported by our own Elliot Golan in a page one story, that Citigroup Inc. is in talks to sell an entire downtown block in Glendale to Amidi Group. The Redwood City developer has submitted plans for the largest project in the city since Americana at Brand – 532 live-work units on 3.2 acres. And that would be on top of other multifamily developments totaling 2,000 units that are either entitled or under construction in the downtown area. The magnitude of development has stunned old hands, including a commercial real estate broker who told Golan “I don’t understand what the thinking is because there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of units available here.” Then again, he added, “This spot is ground zero when it comes to the city’s core. There might not be a better site.” Without doubt, much of the opposition to this latest development surge has come from longtime homeowners who are probably just as stunned to see that Los Angeles – known worldwide as a sprawling, horizontal city – is now going vertical at an accelerating pace. I can understand the sentiment. My aunt and uncle moved out to the Valley decades ago when the last tracts of farmland had yet to be paved over. It wasn’t quite the orange grove utopia of those 1930s postcards but it wasn’t the dirty Bronx they left behind either. It was new, flat, wide open with unencumbered views. In the decades since, Los Angeles sprawl has stretched itself so far that about the only places left for vast new tracts are in such places as Santa Clarita, where the Newhall Land & Farming Co. wants to build its 25,000-home Newhall Ranch, and the even more remote Grapevine, where Tejon Ranch Co. is planning its own new community. But the new generation of young people and young families seem to want something different: housing either close to their jobs or at least close to the city’s growing mass transit system. Hours on the freeway? Not really their thing. So it’s noteworthy that while all the usual suspects are lining up against this new generation of dense multifamily housing, there is no rioting in the streets. In fact, as fast as developers are building them, the projects are filling up. Could they be better? A bit less dense? That is almost true by nature. Developers will nearly always push for bigger projects to get a better return. Maybe it’s because I’m from the East Coast, but this latest slate of infill developments doesn’t bother me. I, for one, prefer it to an L.A. metro area that eventually gobbles up the rest of everything from Bakersfield to Tijuana. Laurence Darmiento is editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].

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